Critical Listening to the Global South: Towards a Decolonization of Sound Media

Critical Listening to the Global South: Towards a Decolonization of Sound Media

DOI of the original publication

URI

https://irf.fhnw.ch/handle/11654/45703

Project type

andere Projekte

Project start

01.05.2022

Project end

30.04.2025

Project status

laufend

Description

Link

https://criticalmedialab.ch/projects/critical-listening-to-the-global-south/

Created during FHNW affiliation

Yes

Strategic action fields FHNW

School

Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Basel FHNW

Institute

Institut Experimentelles Design und Medienkulturen

Financed by

Schweizerischer Nationalfond (SNF)

Project partner

Department of Contemporary Art (KMD), University of Bergen, Norway

Contracting authority

SAP reference

Keywords

Subject (DDC)

700 - Künste und Unterhaltung

Publications

Publication

OM

(Bloomsbury Academic, 01.12.2023) Chattopadhyay, Budhaditya; Herzogenrath, Bernd

This almanac of sound words important to artists and scholars highlights words that expand the way we speak (and write) about sonic experiences. Why write about sound, and how? If sonic philosophy is the attempt "to think about sound by philosophical means," then a metaphilosophical debate appears almost immediately on the horizon: What is called for is an understanding about sound and language, but also about the preconditions of musical understanding. What is at stake is the question of language and sound, as well as expanding how we speak about sonic experience. This almanac tackles these questions from artistic, experimental and personal perspectives. An assemblage of nearly 70 practitioners and theoreticians, artists and scholars offer their favorite ‘sound word.’ These sound words are onomatopoetical, mythological, practical; words of personal importance to the artists and their craft; words from their memory, related to sound. Many entries are not in English – some are untranslatable – and all are accompanied by a personal, explanatory, poetic entry. These are words that have the potential to change our perspective on listening-musicking-thinking.

Publication

Dhvāni: Resonance

(Bloomsbury Academic, 30.12.2022) Chattopadhyay, Budhaditya; Herzogenrath, Bernd

Publication

Sound Practices in the Global South

(Palgrave Macmillan, 30.11.2022) Chattopadhyay, Budhaditya

This book develops a comprehensive understanding of the unique sound worlds of key regions in the Global South, through an auto-ethnographic method of self-reflective conversations with prominent sound practitioners from South Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. The conversations navigate various trajectories of sound practices, illuminating intricate sonic processes of listening, thinking through sounds, ideating, exposing, and performing with sound. This collection of conversations constitutes the main body of the book, including critical and scholarly commentaries on aural cultures, sound theory and production. The book builds a ground-up approach to nurturing knowledge about aural cultures and sonic aesthetics, moving beyond the Eurocentric focus of contemporary sound studies. Instead of understanding sound practices through consumption and entertainment, they are explored as complex cultural and aesthetic systems, working directly with the practitioners themselves, who largely contribute to the development of the sonic methodologies. Refocusing on the working methods of practitioners, the book reveals a tension between the West’s predominant colonial-consumerist cultures, and the collective desires of practitioners to resist colonial models of listening by expressing themselves in terms of their arts and craft, and their critical faculties. Conversations with: Clarence Barlow, Sandeep Bhagwati, Rajesh K. Mehta, Sharif Sehnaoui, Ximena Alarcón Díaz, Hardi Kurda, Mario de Vega, Luka Mukhavele, Khyam Allami, Cedrik Fermont, Khaled Kaddal, David Velez, Juan Duarte, Youmna Saba, Abdellah M. Hassak, Mariana Marcassa, Amanda Gutiérrez, Syma Tariq, Alma Laprida, Siamak Anvari, Mohamad Safa, Debashis Sinha, Zouheir Atbane, Constanza Bizraelli, Jatin Vidyarthi, Joseph Kamaru, Surabhi Saraf, Isuru Kumarasinghe, Hemant Sreekumar.

Publication

Sound in Indian Film and Audiovisual Media: History, Practices, and Production

(Amsterdam University Press, 01.01.2024) Chattopadhyay, Budhaditya

This book is the first ever systematic attempt to study film sound in the Indian subcontinent by artistic research. The book aims to fill the scholarly void on the issues of sound and listening in the Global Souths’ cultures. It develops a comprehensive understanding of the unique sound world of Indian film and audiovisual media through the examination of historical developments of sound from early optical recordings to contemporary digital audio technologies. The book is enriched with a practice-based methodology informed by the author’s own practice and based on extensive conversations with leading sound practitioners in the Indian subcontinent. The book locates an emerging social and spatial awareness in Indian film and media production aided by a creative practice of sound, occurring alongside the traditionally transcendental, oral, and pluriversal approach to listening. By tracing this confluence of tradition and modernity, the book makes valuable contributions to the fields of film history, sound, and media studies.

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